


your absence in me

by lonelyghosts



Series: in the age of dragons [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: (re: marethari and merrill), Abusive Parental Figures, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dalish Origin, Multi, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24007015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: It's her fault. She knows it is.
Relationships: Female Mahariel/Merrill/Tamlen (Dragon Age)
Series: in the age of dragons [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1440070
Kudos: 2





	your absence in me

It's her fault. Kittenelle knows it is. 

She was stupid, really, for all of it. Every action she took on that day where the world fell apart around her was utterly idiotic of her- they were supposed to have been hunting, but Tamlen had made some dumb joke and smiled at her and she hadn't been able to help kissing him, and things had progressed from there until she'd been pressing him against a tree, her knee between his legs as he gasped and laughed and moaned low and long into her mouth.

If they'd been hunting like they were supposed to be, then none of it would have happened. The humans wouldn't have crossed paths with them and she never would have heard about the artifacts in that Creators-damned cave.

All she'd wanted was to find some of the artifacts the stupid shems had mentioned for Merrill. Their anniversary was coming up and she wanted to find her a nice gift, something just as pretty and meaningful as the bow she'd had Master Ilen carve for Tamlen.

She loves Merrill so much, and she wanted Merrill to _know_ that- sometimes, Merrill gets small and quiet and uncertain, especially when she is around Marethari, whose sharp and hypercritical comments make Merrill flinch and stare at her feet. Kit knows that Merrill sometimes feels as though she is an outsider in their relationship, second-best to both of them, and she wanted to prove her love somehow, make Merrill smile in that beaming bright way she does that makes Kit's heart thump with joy.

The cave had been dark and damp and full of spiders and she'd shuddered throughout it all, but it wasn't too bad. She wanted those artifacts, damn it, and no one was going to say that Kit wasn't brave. She'd touched the swirling golden lines of Elgarnan's vallaslin on her face and shouldered on, refusing to look back.

Stupid. She can't stop thinking of Tamlen, touching that mirror, screaming in terror about the thing looking back at him. She'd reached for him, desperate, but then- darkness.

When she'd woken, it had been to Marethari standing over her bed, making clucking sounds as she scolded Kit for taking risks. Kit had nearly hit her. Anger had swollen in her throat, around the blood vessels of her heart. She hadn't touched Marethari in the end- dizziness had flooded her head and she'd collapsed backwards on the bed as Marethari explained about Duncan and the cave and Tamlen, missing. 

Now she sits here, thinking about how stupid she was. As if that would help Tamlen. Tamlen, who is waiting for her in the dark. 

The sunlight hurts her face when she stumbles out of the aravel, anger faded into numbness. She walks from bush to bush, chest to chest, picking leaves off plants and plucking mushrooms from the ground. Gloves that she straps around her wrists, health poultices that she stuffs into the pouch on her belt, arrows that she slings into her quiver. Things Tamlen might need when she finds him.

She goes to Master Ilen and he takes one look at her face and tells her to wait a moment before he ducks behind the aravel to grab something. He returns with the bow she'd commissioned for Tamlen, and she almost recoils looking at it. 

"No, that's not-" she begins, fighting to keep her voice level. It cracks anyways.

"Take it," he says, pressing it into her arms. "Take it, please. Find Tamlen."

She takes it. 

* * *

She doesn't need to tell Merrill, which is maybe the worst part.

Her sleep was a long one. She comes to Merrill to tell her of what had happened and finds her standing straight-backed with her hand tight around her staff, holding onto it as if it is the only lifeline she had left in this world where everything has fallen apart. Her eyes are red from tears.

Kit looks at her and wants to weep for what she'd done in her stupidity, in her naive desire to find some artifact. It is her who did this to Merrill, who reddened her eyes and made her weep. It's her fault.

She doesn't say anything about Tamlen. She doesn't make apologies, or try to explain. She knows that all of them would come out hollow and useless. No value left in them.

Merrill's voice is raspy when she finally speaks.

"Let's go, vhenan."

Kit nods, unable to say it back. Who is she to call Merrill her love when she'd lost them both Tamlen? She lost every right to say anything, to pretend to any measure of kindness or good will or love, when she let Tamlen die. It's her fault. It's her fault.

Marethari had been right about her in the end. She ruins everything she touched. Her parents, first, and Tamlen, and now Merrill too.

When Merrill turns away, still quiet, and beckons gently for her to follow her into the woods, Kit's feet feel like wood, heavy and unmoving. She unslings her bow from her back and follows, and refuses to cry.

* * *

They are silent on their way to the cave, and silent on their way through it. Kit's arrows fly fast and silver and true- at least she has this left, this last empty consolation. Her knives whistle through the air and her grip is tight around her bow.

The bow is beautiful, the wood soft and light and strong in her hands. Tamlen would have loved it, and that alone makes her feel sick- and unworthy of even thinking of touching it. She is tainted. This is her fault. She doesn't deserve this.

In the dark they find the shemlen, standing by the mirror and stroking his beard contemplatively. Kit wants to kill him, her stomach aching at the sight of him. This is the man who saved her and not Tamlen. This was the man who left Tamlen to die. 

He introduces himself as Duncan and asks if she was the girl who had entered the cave with Tamlen, the one who'd seen the mirror. All her anger drains at the sound of Tamlen's name, washed away in the great flood of her desperation to know if Tamlen was alive.

"So- you've found him?" she asks, begs- she knows she looks pathetic but she doesn't care, it doesn't matter, so long as Tamlen is safe. "He's alive? You've found him?"

"No," he tells her, and his face is full of pity as he adds "nor do I think I will."

The anger was gone, but the numbness was worse. She barely hears anything he said after that, only snippets of words like sickness and Blight and death and taint. Briefly she registers Merrill saying something full of desperation about Marethari and a cure, and Duncan saying no, there was no cure. Her knees weaken and her head swims, drowning in the news and the hatred that it brings. 

When he says the mirror should be destroyed, she doesn't waste a second before smashing it. The sound of it shattering eases some measure of anger in her, so she pours her strength into another blow, and another, until all that is left is glass shards on the ground and the panting sounds of her breath. 

"Well," says Duncan. 

Sickness and bile rises acidic in her throat and she retches on the floor once, twice, three times. She is unsurprised to find that she's sobbing, too, salt sliding wet down her cheeks, the whole world blurry and off-center as her heart reaches out for the space where Tamlen belonged and finds it cracked and empty. 

She isn't even taken off guard when she faints.

* * *

Tamlen's funeral is solemn, and quiet. The fire crackles around them as the Keeper says the blessings customary for a funeral, reciting the words that would have Falon'Din carry Tamlen beyond the veil to where their spirits went after death. 

Kit sits on the ground until the ceremony is over and all the others have left, staring into the flames of the bonfire that do nothing to warm the coldness that seeps unbidden into her bones and makes a home there. 

Tomorrow morning she will leave the Clan and go into the world of the shems to become a Grey Warden. The thought makes her stomach hurt.

It was the shemlen, Duncan, who suggested it- "it is the only way to save you from the Taint that took your Tamlen," he told her, and Marethari echoed him when she said that it was Kit's duty to go with him. She didn't even know how to begin to tell them both that she didn't want to be saved.

She tried to fight, screamed and cried and told them she wouldn't go, that she wouldn't abandon Tamlen to the darkness of the rotten awful cave, but the shem was strong. He caught her in an embrace that pulled her close and left her dizzy, unable to do anything but sob into the silverite edge of his armor, begging that he bring Tamlen back. 

In the end it didn't matter. She is to go tomorrow morning to Ostagar, with the other recruits who wait in the nearby town, staying at the inn. All has been arranged, Duncan told her, and she wanted to spit at him but she couldn't muster the effort.

Tamlen, tainted. She wonders if she'll ever see him again- as a darkspawn. And what will she do then? Will she kill him, betray him that one and final time? She doesn't know if she could. Her fingers go numb at the thought.

Maybe she'll let him kill her, she decides. It will be a fitting end. An apology. Maybe he won't understand it, but the gods will. She knows they will.

The sky is dark and there will be a long walk tomorrow. She stands and goes to her bed, legs almost crumpling underneath her. Tomorrow, she will leave, and the Clan will be safe. Merrill will be better off without her. 

When she sleeps, she dreams of darkness and mirrors and sickness and a long, long scream. It sounds like Tamlen's, or maybe her own.


End file.
